Justine Larbalestier on Very Wrong Questions

August 26, 2009

Justine has a big brain and I really enjoyed this post … made me nod a lot … particularly after this morning’s first query was someone yelling at me about how he knew *everything* about writing and publishing, then went on to demonstrate that he didn’t know anything about it at all.

“Royalties? What are royalties? Won’t the publisher steal my idea and get one of their ‘in-house writers’ to write it? Why can’t it be published by Christmas? Oh, no, I’ve not started writing yet.”

Justine writes: Currently I am at the Melbourne Writers Festival and thus I am fielding many questions about writing and publishing. I noticed again that many of the questions unpublished writers ask are coming at it from the wrong end of the stick. Ally Carter calls this asking the wrong questions.

In my experience, the people that make a big fuss over how much they know on any given subject tend to actually know very little about it. There’s an old Chinese proverb: The empty vessel makes the most noise.